“I’d never go out o’ nights, lass,” replies Tom--“never, if I wasn’t drove to it. But what’s a man to do?--this isn’t a country for a poor man to live in--there’s no liberty here. Ah, Rachel, you’re made for something better than this; stitching away day after day, and not a gown or a bonnet fit to put on. You’re losing your looks too--you that used to be so genteel every way.” Mrs. Blacke smiles through her tears; he has not spoken to her so kindly for many a long day. “There’s a country we might go to,” he adds, looking sideways at her, to watch the effect of his arguments, “where a man as is a man, and knows his right hand from his left, needn’t want a good house to cover him, nor good clothes to his back. We’d be there in six weeks at the farthest--what’s that?--why, it’s nothing; and the child all the better for the sea air. There’s a ship to start next Thursday, first class, and all regular. In two months from this day we might be in America; and they don’t _keep_ a man down there because he is down. Rachel, I’d like to see you dressed as you used to be; I’d like to bring up the little one to be as good as its parents, at least. I’d like to be there now; why, the dollars come in by handfuls, and silk’s as cheap as calico.” How could woman resist such an El Dorado? How could such an inducement fail to have its due weight? His wife feels that she could start forthwith, but there is one insuperable difficulty, and she rejoins-- “Ah, that’s all very well, Tom, and we might get our heads above water over there, it’s likely enough. But how are we to get to America?--people can’t travel nor do anything else without money; and where is it to come from?” “_You know_,” replied Tom, with a meaning smile on his pale, anxious face; and while he speaks the clock of a neighbouring church strikes ten. “Any way but _that_, Tom,” says his wife, with a shudder. “I’d do anything, and bear anything for you; but not _that_, Tom--not _that_, as you’ve a soul to be saved!”